Agreed on the first part, not on the second tho, if Starfield was a Skyrim-like hit, it would have done so much, at least if it comes with other hits of course, the problem is that out of the last 5 AAA games MS released, 4 of them were a flop, at least compared to what these should have been.
And yes, because of this, now my expectations with the future lineup have changed, i remember back in 2020 writing in forums and thinking Xbox had a real chance to sell as well as PS5 comparing the future list of games as if every future AAA game from MS/Sony were on the same tier, but the reality is they aren’t.
If i had to choose between Perfect Dark, Avowed or State of Decay vs Sony’s future games i’d go with the former, but at this point it’s impossible to know how good will these games be, specially on release.
When MS bought Obsidian me and many others were thinking like “perfect, imagine Obsidian but with infinite budgets, Avowed will be Elder Scrolls but with more RPG elements”, well that doesn’t look to be the case now, what i’ve seen from Avowed looks more like the typical game from a not so known studio that i discover on the “Coming soon” list from Steam that i put on wishlist waiting to see the reviews after release.
I also dont totally agree wit the last part, Rebirth would easily have doubled it’s sales if it was multiplatform, but it did similar to FF16, which is 3 millions in 7-10 days? on a single platform, if you add Helldivers sales to that, that’s 7+ million sales from 2 exclusive games in a month, no wonder PS5 did so well this month.
This would need to be verified but I read somewhere that out of Final Fantasy 15’s 10 million sales, 8 million were on PS4, i.e. leaving just 20% of sales on PC & Xbox combined.
Aka FF7 Remake & Rebirth would have done nothing on Xbox Series. People don’t buy Xbox to play Final Fantasy. I would buy FF (discounted, mind) because I have a wide variety of interests (& curiosities) & I play lots of different stuff, i.e. even stuff I reckon I won’t enjoy but I try it anyway. But I’m not ‘the market’. My own consumer habit is not representative of the majority of players out there.
Rebirth wouldn’t have doubled its sales, i.e. I see no reason why it would fare much better on other platforms than FF15 did (aka a bit of an outlier anyway in the FF series due to leaning more into the open world activities, more western game design & less traditional FF experience).
As for Starfield, it’s a science-fiction RPG. Skyrim is a medieval dark fantasy RPG.
I think the people at the top of these companies need to be honest with themselves & look at what their product is, i.e. long before it reaches the market. I think it’s pretty obvious Starfield wasn’t going to be the phenomenon Skyrim was. It just didn’t have the same appeal.
They did nothing for years in Europe. They don’t even promote Game Pass. The only thing they promote is their yearly Gamescom show and Starfield.
And we can speculate all we want why those numbers are so bad in February. Numbers would be probably better if it includes UK, but it doesn’t so it’s not really surprising when Microsofts focus is more on US/UK than the rest of the world.
But what do I know I’m just part the advertising guru group and not part of Xbox defense force.
The big takeaway from FF7 Rebirth’s lower sales is it’s a reality check for everyone, including the diehard Sony fanboys & FF7 fanboys who were very vocal in claiming FF7 was the quintessentially most important title in the history of the universe, all games & console eras combined.
The truth is there’s a few million people who think that’s true whilst the rest of the world (& gaming market) doesn’t give a single sh*t about Cloud Strife & FF7.
I think some people are also overlooking the horrible economic situation in Europe as well. Inflation, cost of living & quality of life is falling. These consoles are expensive so I’m not surprised people pick one console, a few games & then they’re done.
PS5 has very low software attachment rates as well. So people buy the console but they don’t buy all the games.
Of course it’s not just failed PR, but you would think that when the economic situation is not great that buying the cheapest console with the best value in gaming (Series S + GP) would be good purchase over PS5/Switch. But I think that a lot of people just doesn’t know what GP is. It also doesn’t help when the biggest games are on the boxes of PlayStation like CoD and FIFA.
I think this has been discussed before but there’s a question mark over whether consumers who buy a PS5 for COD, EA Sports FC, GTA5 or Fortnite even care about the value proposition of gamepass, aka a rental service.
Just because you or I might find the offer great, it doesn’t mean the majority of potential console owners out there agree. Games aren’t movies. People don’t consume them at the same rate.
I think the issue with all of this is the Xbox 360 was a product that Europeans liked and was in the conversation when talking about gaming consoles.I don’t think Japan would ever happen unless a game blows up on PC or multiplat. However, Europe was something that Microsoft did well in the 360 gen. However, they threw it all a way in the XB1 gen. They pretty much lost a lot of their consumers with the XB1 launch debacle. Unsure, if things can turn around for Xbox in that market, but I think Microsoft is missing the IPs that make people jump on board. I know Microsoft is not in a situation like Nintendo where they can survive a flop like the Wii U and gain back success due to IPs. I just feel they haven’t really tried to gain back market by having a steady of release of games and building IPs and actually market to these markets.
The 80% of sales of FF15 being on Playstation was info released in 2016, it was against Xbox, the PC port of the game came 2 years later, and even then, Steam has grown over 2x in the last 4-5 years, it has nothing to do with what it was when FF15 released.
Rebirth wouldn’t have done great numbers on Xbox simply because it has a small installed base and it has more West tastes, but PC is giant and it’s getting big in Japan too, between these 2 platforms i’m sure it would have done close to 2x the sales it did being only on PS5.
Not sure what you mean with the Starfield genre thing, imo Starfield is, or should have been, a Bethesda game, just like Skyrim or Oblivion, or Fallout are bethesda games, i hardly consider these RPG’s, or medieval dark fantasy or post apocalyptic games, just Bethesda-like games.
Starfield simply tried to move away from what Bethesda does best and what makes their games so popular, without fixing any of the flaws these games had.
But if the game had that great exploration the Bethesda games always had? it could have been a huge hit, of course, i really thought it’d be
Final Fantasy is one of the biggest IP’s in jrps. The notion that it “just doesn’t do well on Xbox” is silly to me. It sells more on PS by virtue of there being more Playstations out there and that thanks to Sony paying to keep it off Xbox it remains synonymous with Playstation and Square making dumb business decisions to limit their games to fewer platforms. Sega isn’t having that issue, neither is Capcom, Bamco and of all devs Atlus.
Sega/Atlus actually ported their games to xbox , back to back and weren’t all wishy washy about what goes to xbox and what doesn’t and now games like Persona and Yakuza have an audience on Xbox and are selling better than ever. Go figure. Who’d have thought? Now the main SMT series is coming to xbox as well. Compare that to how Square does things,
Why should an Xbox owner by a prequel to a game whose sequel will never come to their console in the foreseeable future? Why invest in it. Square Enix’s “strategy” of a random game her and there every blue moon for xbox isn’t going to cut it and it seems like the new CEO realizes that. At least I hope he does, time will tell…
So you’re saying that if Starfield wouldve released on Playstation the reception wouldnt have been wholly different? At this point, we can actually say that many Xbox games would’ve faired better if they released on Playstation on Nintendo. We’re seeing this play out now. And any one with a modicum of intelligence already knew Xbox games were rated and treated differently simply because the were Xbox games. Sony fanboys and the media didn’t JUST become transparent if you were paying attention.
You’re misreading my post. Maybe the critics would have been less biased, it’s entirely possible. I’ll never deny there’s an “Xbox tax” because we’ve all seen it to various degrees.
But Bethesda? Come on now, i.e. Fallout 4 & 76 had issues with their reception. A lot of people weren’t happy with those titles for various reasons & the fact they were multiplatform didn’t help either of them.
Starfield was a continuation of that trend. The “Nasa punk” vibe is just not the same as the premise in Skyrim, i.e. dragons & everything else which in 2011 was super popular.
This isn’t even a critique of them game here, i.e. simply an observation that Starfield as a multiplat title day one would in no way guarantee a better reception.
I get where he is coming from because excitement for the xbox brand has been deflated. As a consumer I don’t care about Microsoft making more revenue by going third party with some of their games or even improving their marketing beats for these games. As an Xbox consumer I just care about gamepass drops and first party output. It’s a shame we have to wait 5 months for an xbox first party. Meanwhilem they’re doing marketing beats for these old ports hitting Playstation and Switch.
Anyway, I think that’s some of the problems with this, but I’ve learned to accept this, but can’t say I am excited about the “Xbox” brand like I was this gen every other year except 2022
Games are games, whether multiplatform or exclusive, I’ve been playing some great games lately and still am. Game Pass keeps getting great additions, May has Hellblade 2, soon after we’ll get the Xbox show. It’s fine.
I’m having tons of fun and am pretty excited. Hype really isn’t always good anyway.
